Saturday, March 28, 2015

Oh ! March ! You really dragged your heels this month, by making it feel like double the days. It's not like I sense this every month, but I think it has been busy in places and gone slower than usual. Now however, it's very near the end of month and April is knocking on the door with Easter along with it.

Thankfully, I have some time off after Easter, so that I can catch up with some rest and do some more bits of gamedev.

Assault ( Surreal Office Duties Challenge ) ::

I encountered a problem this month with regards to ground floor room, in by, when the player approaches a set of stairs to the first floor you are placed in the same place, but on the first floor. Well, technically speaking this should happen, but it doesn't, the player appears further away or even trapped. After testing the player code and then a smaller room, it transpires that the rooms are either too big or a bug of some sort has occured within the room. So, I will redesign or redo the ground and first floor rooms again to try and eliminate the problem. I am thankful it has happened now during testing in the early stages, otherwise it would have been really frustrating otherwise.

The enemy follow routine works well and I have chosen a couple of fonts for the main title screen and ingame. I am pleased with them and they looked well suited !

The positioning and layout isn't set in stone at the moment, but I think maybe the title might be more right justified with a menu beneath it. In addition, this month I have inplemented an energy bar, high score and score titles.

Not a great deal I know, but hopefully next month the rooms should be fully working and I can get on with designing some tiles and sprites. The rest will flow as it usually does whenever I get to a stage like this during game design.

Games Played in March ::

PS Vita ::

Fez ::

Again ? Really ? Yep ! Without a sign of completion in sight on any gaming platform, this game has appeared again, but on the PS Vita. I had some credit left for the Playstation Store, so I bought it. I have completed part of the first stage, just like always and only pick the game up again in small amounts, to make it last. I don't know how long it would take for me to complete, years ?

Subscription Boxes ::

Arcade Block :: ( February 2015 )

Here we have the February Arcade Block ( with some Zelda based items ), which always arrives in the following month, because the dispatch dates for these are set to the 25th of each month. The block for March will be the last one for me, as I only subscribed for three months. There is still Nerd Block for the remainder of 2015, so watch out for unboxing videos of these.

Nerd Block :: ( March 2015 )

This months Nerd Block theme is based on Simon Says with some Simon Pegg related items thrown in for good measure. I am loving the t-shirt for this month, epic !

Zavvi - ZBOX ::

This was spur of the moment decision to buy from Zavvi whom are based in the U.K. The theme of this non-subscription service was 'retro' and for the life of me, I unboxed the ZBOX without doing an unboxing video, but I did take some photos of the great items. All of the items were great, but the Pixel Bricks Pac-Man was really fiddly to put together, mainly because the building instructions weren't well laid out. I guess we have all been used to building Lego and some cloned brick kits are never up to the same standard of design, but nevertheless still a nice build.

So, we are at the end of the first quarter of 2015 and British Summer Time starts as well. The clocks go forward one hour on the night before and then in the autumn to mark winter, they go back an hour, all rather confusing, but it's all about daylight savings time.

Next month there are a couple of retro gaming events being held that I usually try to attend, ROM in Oxford and Retro Computer Museum in Leicestershire. There is always lots to see, play and experience retro gaming wise, well worth the visit !

On a final note ... Watch out for Zombies with Shopping Trollies in your local Supermarket !